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I wish first of all to thank the Austrian Parliament
—not just for hosting this Roundtable, but also for its longstanding support for global nuclear disarmament.
This goal has also been actively pursued by our two co-sponsors today, the Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (PNND) and the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
I welcome this opportunity to reaffirm strongly our partnership in this great common cause.
I am speaking today as a representative not of any parliament, but on behalf of an initiative known as Mayors for Peace.
Originally launched by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—the targets of tragic atomic bomb attacks in 1945 that killed over 210,000 citizens—this initiative today consists of over 6,400 mayors in 160 countries and regions.
Our membership continues to expand because our compelling humanitarian message resonates around the world.
In our publications, our conferences, our petitions, and many other advocacy efforts, we appeal to the conscience of all humanity by recalling the catastrophic effects of these weapons on our fellow human beings.
We encourage the world to listen to the testimonies of the survivors of those attacks—the hibakusha—and their humanitarian call that
"no one else shall ever again suffer as we have".
We know that as the human effects of these cruel and indiscriminate weapons are more widely understood, the greater will be the motivation to abolish and eliminate them.
We are striving hard to achieve this goal by the year 2020, the target year set to allow as many as possible surviving hibakusha to witness the concrete result in their own eyes—what UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called a "perfect vision".
Along with many other groups, we also support efforts to halt the proliferation of such weapons and to prevent their acquisition by non-State actors.
These aims are, however, not sufficient to guarantee against a future use of nuclear weapons.
This is why we are not seeking just to limit the numbers of nuclear weapons, to reduce the likelihood of their use, to limit their deployments, or to contain the effects of their use.
Complete nuclear disarmament is our goal, which we believe must be pursuant to a binding legal obligation, preferably a nuclear weapon convention.
Fortunately, all countries officially support global nuclear disarmament, either by being parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, by their votes on UN General Assembly resolutions, or in their policy statements.
The challenge we face is not in reaffirming this goal, but in ensuring that the actions of States are fully consistent with achieving it.
Together, all of us here today share much more than a commitment to one of humanity's most important goals.
We share something else that will surely help us one day actually to achieve this goal.
That "something else" is our tie to the people—both mayors and national parliamentarians are members of institutions not as individuals, but as representatives of our fellow citizens.
Yet we are also united on an even more profound level—the interests we represent are not limited to meeting the immediate day-to-day material demands of our individual constituents.
We are instead united in pursuing a truly global interest—a world without nuclear weapons.
As increasing numbers of city mayors, national parliamentarians and diverse civil society groups join in this campaign to achieve this aim, we are approaching a significant juncture in world history.
We are seeing the emergence of an age in which democracy is coming to disarmament.
Countries big and small are joining together in pursuing this goal.
Not just the elites in our societies, but increasingly the general public is taking a real interest in this cause.
As participation grows in debates about the existence of such weapons, we will have an opportunity to overcome the most difficult obstacle of all—namely, the "lack of political will" among the States that possess them.
So I salute the representatives and the people of Austria for their enlightened leadership and vision.
As the world's cities and parliaments increasingly unite in common cause, the world itself will move forward toward a more peaceful, humane, and prosperous future.
History is on our side.
Let us all work together towards creating peaceful world free from nuclear weapons.
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